Private Elevator Hotspots in the U.S.

The ‘status symbol’ amenity is found in only one in 10,000 listings in the U.S., data show

Home elevators are rising to the occasion in today’s luxury market, with sleek cabins and elaborate features that help drive up prices.

“Elevators are status symbols and conversation pieces and, once you get one, you wonder how you ever lived without one,” says Nella Stevens, owner of Park Elevators in Gastonia, N.C.

According to realtor.com, elevators appeared in the descriptions of about 2,300 listings in the U.S., or roughly one in 10,000, as of the last week in May.

Realtor.com looked at the top six hotspots for private elevators and found that the median list prices for properties with elevators ranged from $1.4 million to $4.5 million. Individual listings went as high as $50 million and $70 million. (News Corp, owner of Mansion Global, also owns Move Inc., which operates realtor.com.)

Private elevators on detached single-family homes are more common in the Sarasota and Cape Coral areas of Florida and in the Los Angeles area. They are more prevalent in condos, lofts and penthouses in New York, Miami and Boston, where a shared elevator might also offer private access to a single apartment.

Driving the interest, industry experts say, is a younger crowd of home buyers who enjoy the bragging rights that come with in-home elevators but also see them as a good investment in their property. A residential elevator can add about 10% to the value of a property, according to Stevens, and can increase the marketability of a multilevel home by about 50%.

Residential elevators can be design statements, according to Mike Burke of the California-based company McKinley Elevator. One owner had his elevator tricked out like a submarine while another—which was featured in The Wall Street Journal—was decorated like the elevator in a mine shaft as a tribute the owner’s coal-miner grandfather.

One owner, Stevens said, discovered her elevator was running slowly after she had installed 500 pounds of granite inside the cabin as decoration. Other owners put in lighting so that precious works of art can be displayed.

Texas-based “vertical transportation” consultant Jim Fortune is widely regarded as the world’s foremost expert in installing elevators in super-tall towers. His portfolio includes the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the tallest building in the world, and Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, which is scheduled to be is completed in 2018.

In the future, voice recognition systems will operate residential elevators in condos and co-op buildings, Fortune said. “The biggest thing will be what we call ‘hierarchy of dispatch,’ which means that the person who is in the penthouse will be expressed all the way to his front door while the people who live in the middle floors will have to share the elevator with other people,” he says. “It will all be encoded to your smartphone or iwatch so that the elevator knows when you are on your way home and it will be there, doors open and waiting for you.”

People choose home elevators for more than just mobility concerns, added Stevens. “Moving groceries, laundry, furniture, children and luggage is easier with a residential elevator and it allows many people to retire in their family homes,” she said.

Stevens said her company recently installed an in-home elevator for a couple who invited their skeptical friends to try it. “They’d thought it was an extravagance, and our clients would rarely use it, but now they all want one,” she said.